A kind smile played fitfully over the waxen features, like the memory of life that haunts a plaster mask. Diana laid her fingers gently on his arm, and Marcantonio broke out into solicitous protestations. His uncle was not yet sixty,--he had many years of life,--this was a passing indisposition, a black humour, a melancholy. One should never expect to live less than seventy years at the very least, he said, and that would not be reached for a long time.
"Ah! no, dear uncle," he concluded, "you will surely live to see my sons growing up to be men, and to marry Diana's little girls!"
The cardinal shook his head. That was not the way of it, he said. He might die any day now, he said, in his meek voice; and it really sounded as though he might, so that Donna Diana felt her eyes growing dim and her heart big. She took one of the old man's thin hands in both of hers, and he with the other pushed back the rich, heavy hair and smoothed it tenderly. A marvellous picture in sooth they made,--the dying prelate in his purple and scarlet, and the great unspeakable freshness and life of the fair woman. Marcantonio passed his hand over his eyes and sighed as he sat watching them.
Then his Eminence explained to the two what his chief plan was in calling them to him now. He had made a deed, he said, which he wished them both to understand. There were certain estates which he had inherited from his mother,--their grandmother,--as being the second son. These he earnestly desired to see incorporated in the property of the Carantoni family. To that end he had made an act of gift, transferring the lands to Marcantonio at once, on the condition that the cardinal should continue to receive a certain income from them during his life. This he insisted upon doing, as he feared lest after his death the lands should be sold by the executors in order to divide the proceeds between the two heirs. In order to make the present arrangement a fair one, however, he at the same time gave to his niece Diana de Charleroi a sum of money from his personal estate which was equal to the value of the lands given to Marcantonio. Whatever they found after his death could then be divided and distributed,--the lands being safe in the male line; they might find something left after all.